Feedback on full IB in mcps
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Anonymous
That’s not true at our school - though most people who do have tech, PE, and health done before junior year (which generally means they take some through summer school). |
Anonymous
| You might find this thread helpful: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1153633.page |
Anonymous
My kid, and a good number of their fellow IB diploma candidates, are taking instrumental music at Einstein. It definitely requires taking both health semesters over the summer. My kid decided to take AP Computer Science Principles for the tech credit, which isn’t offered over the summer, so they did that sophomore year instead of music. If they’d done tech over the summer, they could have taken music all four years. |
Anonymous
If it's only HS soccer and lax no big deal. Many of our kids are doing much more outside school. |
Anonymous
Yeah, it’s sometimes less about the number of credits and more about the availability of classes. I’d guess it’s probably easier at RMIB, which has more sections of the various IB courses. My non-RMIB kid had to make a few compromises to get all the pieces to fit, but felt it was worthwhile for a well-rounded life. |
Anonymous
If you plan well, you can, especially if you do PE freshman year and knock out other electives in MS but its very tight and if you want to do anything more, there is no flexibility with only one elective. You can sometimes get your tech credit done in MS, and do PE freshman year, and take health ed over the summer (or two summers). But, that's assuming your child doesn't want to take any other electives in band or anything else. And, that's exactly the point, if you didn't plan it all well, you cannot take four years of music. |
Anonymous
I'm assuming a lot of students/parents don't plan it well as we got an email about it. We'll have all those done by the start of sophomore year but it took lots of planning in MS and summers. |
Anonymous
| Theres a lot less flexibility since you sign up for the two year package, the courses in math and science are are less rigurous, presumably there is more writing to make up for these shrtcomings. Not sure a 10 page writeup at the end redeems all these shortcomings, and the extended essay format is somewhat artificial and awkward. Other aspects of the program like the theory of knowledge feel gimmicky, nowhere will you find anything similar. The writing preparation seems to be focusing on the quantity instead of quality, but of course it depends on school, teacher and the student. |
Anonymous
maybe, but the TOK and EE essays are graded by the IB org. I didn't read all of DC's papers in IBDP, but I do know that they had to do a ton of research and experiment for their EE. DC chose the EE for their IB HL math class. IMO, this is one of the best parts of IBDP - the research and analytical writing. I don't think the AP English classes do this much writing. |
Anonymous
| I’m in college right now (call me a troll all you want, but I’m not) and I took and AP curriculum and my roommate took an IB curriculum. I’d say she’s much better prepared for college than I am (I’m from MCPS, she is not). |
Anonymous
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Mine was a 4 year varsity athlete who also played club off season —it’s possible but the sleep suffered. There is a lot of work.
Someone asked about enviro — it’s is very similar to AP. Mine took both tests and got the top mark in each — she did do a day or so studying for the AP exam to make sure she had the right terminology. Much of the IB stuff is graded in Europe so if you have worries that McPS is an easy grader, that eliminates that! I find the course selection system sort of bureaucratic and confusing. I just rely on my kid to figure it out. |
Anonymous
NP here - thank you for posting this! My kid is in the IB and I wonder if it will be worth it. She is really just doing it to get herself prepared for college. Appreciate your perspective. |
Anonymous
Oh, it's the "The IB program is trash" poster. |
Anonymous
I think it will be entirely worth it. I’m at LAC, so there’s quite a lot of humanity related requirements to graduate. I’m definitely a little nervous going into them, and she feels very strong because of how much writing she’s done! Good luck to your kid!! |
Anonymous
I’m wondering what kind of experiment you’d do for a high level math extended essay, perhaps you’re confused about what he actually did. Undergrad math and science classes are still mostly problem sets, lab reports and exams, do these well and you’re not going to be unprepared. The theory of knowledge essay exemplifies how inflexible the program is, the topic doesn’t strike me as so important that every student has to write a paper on it. Also not a big fan of minimum word length requirements, makes some students adopt a convoluted writing style. The AP diploma, research and capstone, is very similar but definitely not as successful as the IB program. Either students interested in writing gravitate towards IB or when given the choice prefer a class more focused on building the knowledge base that might help them more with college admissions. |